Is it time to give up on your WordPress site?

Nowadays WordPress has become extremely vulnerable to hacking because it's open source and therefore really well-understood, runs something like 30 percent of all websites, and, given the huge range of third party additions (themes, plugins, etc.), ensuring any given installation is hacker-proof is pretty difficult. "Ah!" you might be muttering, "surely keeping WordPress and your plugins up to date is the answer?" Well, my friend, you might like to think so but it seems this latest wave of hacking WordPress may involve one or more zero day vulnerabilities. The scale and complexity of the WordPress ecosystem makes for what's called a large attack surface.

But given the risks of getting hacked, which range from site defacement, through the theft of sensitive data, to becoming a source of malware to your visitors, you have to ask yourself if you still afford the time and effort to effectively secure your site and, even more importantly, if sensitive data could be exposed, can you afford the risk of remediation and possible litigation? Note that cyber-insurance, which sounds like a good hedge against disaster, may not work unless you can prove that you have exercised “due care,” something that may be tricky given the issues involved.

So, what’s the alternative? The answer could be a “static website” or "flat site"; i.e. a site that isn’t full of of databases and backend code but rather a bunch of static HTML, CSS, and client-side JavaScript that can be locked down and easily checked for unauthorized modifications.

There are a bunch of tools available to build and manage Static websites, and a good starting reference point is Static Generators.

At WebriQ we have put together a Modern Technology Stack for developers and content editors that is simplifying the many tasks at hand in building, managing, updating and hosting Static websites. It consist of a Static Web Generator specifically designed for business websites, all the tools to publish the code on Github and all the automation tools to continuously manage and update the website through Github commits. Last but not least, it contains an online Content Management System that deploys content changes almost instantaneously to your website.

Check it out on WebriQ APP